4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Screening: Monday 2 February 2009
Romania 2007.Director: Cristian Mungiu.
Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov.
Subtitles.
Certificate: 15. 113 minutes.
Synopsis
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, this arresting portrayal of illegal abortion in late 1980s Romania will leave an impression long after the final credits have rolled.Anamaria Marinca (who won a BAFTA for her performance in Channel 4’s Sex Traffic) plays Otilia, friend of the unhappily pregnant Gabita. Out of loyalty, Otilia organises a backstreet, late-in-the-day termination for her distraught friend.
Under Ceausescu’s harsh Communist regime, where abortion was illegal and contraception scarcely available, both women suffer physical and financial hardship culminating in an excruciating dinner party scene where Otilia is forced to endure small talk while Gabita lies fighting for her life in a squalid hotel room as the film reaches its gripping conclusion.
Notes
Skilfully directed by Cristian Mungiu, a rising star of Romanian cinema’s ‘New Wave’, 4 Months is less a polemic about the right to choose, or even against Communist dictatorship – though he brilliantly conveys the stifling sense of oppression of Ceausescu’s last days – but a celebration of the solidarity and diginity of two friends willing to make sacrifices for each other.The acting and cinematography are of the highest calibre in a drama so gritty and realistically human that it makes Vera Drake look sentimental.
In addition to the Palme d’Or, 4 Months was nominated for a Golden Globe and was awarded Best Foreign Language Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the USA National Society of Film Critics, the Toronto Film Critics Association and was nominated in three categories by the London Film Critics Circle.
